However, as Glenn Greenwald points out, the murder allows us to see how the term "terrorism" is worthless as a factual term, but - in the US mainstream press - is a politically loaded term of propaganda applied ONLY to states and individuals deemed hostile to the US government/corporate interests. By comparing the coverage of this actual terrorist attack against a civilian scientist to the coverage of the ludicrous US claims regarding Iran's supposed plot to kill a Saudi ambassador, one can see how the term "terrorism" is distorted and misused in most major news organizations in the US. And NPR is no exception.

To find anything aired on NPR regarding the actual political murder of a civilian in Iran you have to drop "terror" from your search and simply query NPR with "Iran assassination" and limit it to "Heard on Air". Doing this gives you ONE story on All Things Considered. Not only does this January 11, 2012 story not mention terror or terrorism, it features Peter Kenyon normalizing this assassination as a legitimate tool of statecraft. Paraphrasing nuclear analyst David Albright, Kenyon says, "Tehran must be feeling the pressure." Albright then speaks,

"It knows that some of its scientists are under threat by assassination. There's been cyberattacks. There's efforts to get Iranians to defect. And we've called it kind of a third way. All those things are continuing, and that's added to the pressure."

If there is any doubt that Kenyon and NPR share this criminal attitude, Kenyon adds,

"This is the latest in a series of increasingly belligerent signals between Tehran and Western capitals."

That's interesting because I don't recall the "plot" to kill the Saudi ambassador described as a "belligerent signal," and I would wager a Romney-sized $10,000 that the assassination of a US or Israeli scientist by Iranian-backed killers would never be called a "belligerent signal" on NPR.

by NPR's Pam Fessler on today's hit piece "Study: 1.8 Million Dead People Still Registered to Vote". Closing an accounting that will surely bolster the Repugnican "voter fraud" bogeyman, Fessler states:

"Coney recalled another data-matching program in Florida where legitimate voters were confused with convicted felons and mistakenly removed from the rolls."

Confused? Mistakenly? Someone tell Katherine Harris she only made a mistake. Who knew!

Postings at NPR

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My name is Matthew Murrey and I'm from Florida, but have been living in the Midwest since 1984. I started this blog because no one else was blogging NPR's drift toward the right - and it made more sense than yelling at the radio.

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